Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a catalyst recovery system, a hydrocarbon synthesis reaction apparatus and hydrocarbon synthesis reaction system, and a catalyst recovery process.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2011-004752, filed Jan. 13, 2011, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
Description of Related Art
In recent years, as a process for synthesizing liquid fuels from natural gas, the GTL (Gas To Liquids: liquid fuels synthesis) technique has been developed. This GTL technique includes the steps of reforming a natural gas to produce a synthesis gas containing a carbon monoxide gas (CO) and a hydrogen gas (H2) as main components, synthesizing hydrocarbons using this synthesis gas as a feedstock and using a catalyst via the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis reaction (hereinafter also referred to as the “FT synthesis reaction”), and then hydrogenating and fractionating these hydrocarbons to produce liquid fuel products such as naphtha (raw gasoline), kerosene, gas oil and wax and the like.
In the hydrocarbon synthesis reaction apparatus used in this GTL technique, the hydrocarbons are synthesized by subjecting the carbon monoxide gas and hydrogen gas within the synthesis gas to an FT synthesis reaction inside a reactor main unit that contains a slurry prepared by suspending solid catalyst particles (such as a cobalt catalyst) in a liquid medium (for example, liquid hydrocarbons or the like).
In recent years, a variety of catalyst recovery systems have been investigated for separating and recovering, from the reaction slurry, those catalyst particles that have degraded due to the heat caused by the reactions that occur during the FT synthesis reaction process, friction between the catalyst particles and the inner walls of the feed passages, or other external factors.
A known example of this type of catalyst recovery system is the configuration disclosed in Patent Document 1 described below. This catalyst recovery system includes a first line for extracting the slurry from the reactor main unit, a storage tank for storing the extracted slurry, a second line for treating the slurry within the storage tank, and a plurality of filters provided within the second line from the upstream side of the line toward the downstream side.